So here I am playing Madden 2003 for the PC and had to use like medium detail to get a reasonable frame rate when I was thinking what I should do to get to play at max level with all the details turned on. I figured that the easiest way for me to do that is to upgrade my video card. I have a Pentium III 500 MHz processor (I don't think you can upgrade this), 384 MB of RAM (which is plenty, I think) and a pathetic 16 MB nVidia TNT video card.

So I go to CompUSA just to look at my options and I'm not really sure what's what. It seems that 128 MB of video RAM is the most you can get and the market sweet spot seems to be 64 MB. Then there's the nVidia GeForce4 MX400, Ti4200, Ti4600, under different brand names....so I figure nVidia is the chipset. Then there's ATI Radeon among other chipsets.

So what should I be looking at as far as video cards go given my current system configuration? What chipset is best? What's the price range?

Well, first of all, just upgrading your video card doesn't mean that you'll get get better gaming. Those new cards with more than 64mb are were made for the faster chips like the P4. So, don't spend all that $$$ on a top of the line card.

Best thing I can say to do is get a nVidia gf3 card with 32mb of ram. This should help a bit and isn't too pricey.

or go with a geforce 4 Ti4200- The advantage in this choice is that you can use it for your next computer upgrade. the negative is that you might have trouble powering it with smaller power supplies in an old system.

If you can find a deal on a geforce 3 Ti200 or 500 for less that might be a good idea also.

I forgot Visiontek went out of business. Probably not a good choice unless the place you get it from offeres an extended warranty. As broadway said, go for a GF2 (GTS, Ultra etc. non-mx based) or A 7500, but don't spend over $50 for a videocard since you have such an aging cpu.

However, I don't play games ... partially because my wife would kill me and my card won't let me.

Well, from what i've been reading it would seem that new competition brought forth by ATI's new offerings will have the usual drastic effect on current vid cards. The current sweetspot seems to be the GF ti 4200 64 and 128meg varieties and hopefully soon they will drop in price bigtime but you should still get long gaming life from those cards. If you can wait then you may be able to get an even better deal than what you can get right now.

If you decide to get something like the the GF4 ti 4200 you may find out that your processor is the bottleneck, the weak link in the system.

Check out Tom's Hardware (if I recall properly) for a recent review of the ATI offering and some insight for the future.

I've got the ATI Radeon 7500 64mb card, and I couldn't be happier with it. I don't do too much gaming aside from the occasional game of NWN or Unreal, but it works great with my 1ghz Duron and 256mb PC2600DDR RAM. Got mine OEM at a local store for $60. Shop around.